Travelers Come in Contact With Local Spanish Culture Through Its Cuisine
CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., July 29 /PRNewswire/ — Epicurean Ways and Gerry Dawes announce the launch of an Insider’s Culinary Tour in Spain: A Taste of Andalucia. Two tours are scheduled for 2008. They will be guided by Gerry Dawes.
Gerry Dawes is considered a leading expert on Spanish food and wine. Dawes’s articles have appeared in Food Arts, Wine News and Sante. He was awarded the Premio Nacional de Gastronomia (Spain’s National Gastronomy Award) in 2003.
Jane Gregg, Director of Epicurean Ways, says this about Gerry Dawes: “Gerry brings amazing energy and enthusiasm to his tours. He knows more about Spanish food and wine than almost anyone I’ve ever met. He also knows the places, the restaurants — famous and not — the chefs, the winery owners.”
The Taste of Andalucia tour will focus on the extraordinary cuisine of the region, highlighting traditional food and artisanal ingredients, and innovative chefs and avant-garde techniques.
The secrets to Spanish cuisine lie in the extraordinary freshness of its ingredients and the relative simplicity of the cooking methods. The tours also introduce participants to the lifestyle of Spanish cuisine. What is perhaps most remarkable about cuisine in Andalucia is the tradition of the tapeo — going out for tapas. Tapas are inseparable from the tapeo, and as such cannot be reduced to a set of recipes.
Spanish chef Ferran Adria writes in Mas que tapas (More Than Tapas) (Vivendi Publicaciones, 2008, p.8), “If Andalucia is more than tapas, tapas are much more than food; they identify us, because they reveal a way of living as a society, of coming together around food and drink, which ceases to be a physiological fact and becomes a social act.”
Travelers on the Taste of Andalucia tours come in contact with local Andalusian culture, meeting chefs and winemakers and learning first-hand about the cuisine, wine and culinary traditions.
In recent years, Spanish cuisine has caught the attention of the likes of American chefs and food writers Mark Bittman (The New York Times), Mario Batali (Babbo), and Terrance Brennan (Picholine and Artisanal), among others.
Jose Andres, Washington, D.C. chef and restaurateur (Jaleo) hosted the 2008 26-part PBS series Made in Spain, exploring Spain’s 17 culinary regions.
A Taste of Andalucia: Nine days/eight nights. $5600 p/p. Most meals, and a lot of wine, included.
Jane Gregg, a tireless explorer of Spain, is the Director of Epicurean Ways, a culinary travel company specializing in Spanish cuisine and wine tours, based in Charlottesville, Virginia, and Barcelona, Spain.
Gerry Dawes, New York, is a food and wine writer specializing in Spain, who travels frequently to Spain to speak at gastronomic conferences, research Spanish food and wine and lead culinary tours.
A Taste of Andalucia:
http://www.epicureanways.com/trips/a-taste-of-andalucia
Epicurean Ways: http://www.epicureanways.com
Gerry Dawes 914-414-6982 gerrydawes@aol.com
http://www.gerrydawesspain.blogspot.com /
SOURCE: Epicurean Ways
